Sign Language Among North American Indians 25

Sign Language Among North American Indians 25

The Chinese character for _man_, is Fig. 130, and may have the same

obvious conception as a Dakota sign for the same signification: "Place

the extended index, pointing upward and forward before the lower

portion of the abdomen."

 

The Chinese specific character for _woman_ is Fig. 131, the cross mark

denoting the wrist, and if the remainder be considered the hand,

the fingers may be imagined in the position made by many tribes, and

especially the Utes, as depicting the _pudendum muliebre_, Fig. 132.

 

[Illustration: Fig. 131.]

 

[Illustration: Fig. 132.]

 

The Egyptian generic character for _female_ is [Symbol: semicircle]

(Champollion, _Dict._,) believed to represent the curve of the mammæ

supposed to be cut off or separated from the chest, and the gesture

with the same meaning was made by the Cheyenne Titchkematski, and

photographed, as in Fig. 133. It forms the same figure as the Egyptian

character as well as can be done by a position of the human hand.

 

[Illustration: Fig. 133.]

 

The Chinese character for _to give water_ is Fig. 134, which may be

compared with the common Indian gesture _to drink, to give water_,

viz: "Hand held with tips of fingers brought together and passed to

the mouth, as if scooping up water", Fig. 135, obviously from the

primitive custom, as with Mojaves, who still drink with scooped hands.

 

[Illustration: Fig. 134.]

 

[Illustration: Fig. 135.]

 

Another common Indian gesture sign for _water to drink, I want

to drink_, is: "Hand brought downward past the mouth with loosely

extended fingers, palm toward the face." This appears in the Mexican

character for _drink_, Fig. 136, taken from Pipart, _loc. cit._, p.

351. _Water_, i.e., the pouring out of water with the drops falling

or about to fall, is shown in Fig. 137, taken from the same author (p.

349), being the same arrangement of them as in the sign for _rain_,

Fig. 114, p. 344, the hand, however, being inverted. _Rain_ in the

Mexican picture writing is shown by small circles inclosing a dot,

as in the last two figures, but not connected together, each having a

short line upward marking the line of descent.

 

[Illustration: Fig. 136.]

 

[Illustration: Fig. 137.]

 

With the gesture for drink may be compared Fig. 138, the Egyptian

Goddess Nu in the sacred sycamore tree, pouring out the water of life

to the Osirian and his soul, represented as a bird, in Amenti (Sharpe,

from a funereal stele in the British Museum, in _Cooper's Serpent

Myths_, p. 43).

 

[Illustration: Fig. 138.]

 

The common Indian gesture for _river_ or _stream, water_, is made by

passing the horizontal flat hand, palm down, forward and to the left

from the right side in a serpentine manner.

 

[Illustration: Fig. 139.]

 

The Egyptian character for the same is Fig. 139 (Champollion, _Dict._,

p. 429). The broken line is held to represent the movement of the

water on the surface of the stream. When made with one line less

angular and more waving it means _water_. It is interesting to compare

with this the identical character in the syllabary invented by a West

African negro, Mormoru Doalu Bukere, for _water_, [Symbol: water,

represented by a wavy line], mentioned by TYLOR in his _Early History

of Mankind_, p. 103.

 

The abbreviated Egyptian sign for _water_ as a stream is Fig. 140

(Champollion, _loc. cit._), and the Chinese for the same is as in Fig.

141.

 

[Illustration: Fig. 140.]

 

[Illustration: Fig. 141.]

 

In the picture-writing of the Ojibwa the Egyptian abbreviated

character, with two lines instead of three, appears with the same

signification.

 

The Egyptian character for _weep_, Fig. 142, an eye, with tears

falling, is also found in the pictographs of the Ojibwa (Schoolcraft,

I, pl. 54, Fig. 27), and is also made by the Indian gesture of drawing

lines by the index repeatedly downward from the eye, though perhaps

more frequently made by the full sign for _rain_, described on page

344, made with the back of the hand downward from the eye--"eye rain."

 

[Illustration: Fig. 142.]

 

The Egyptian character for _to be strong_ is Fig. 143 (Champollion,

_Dict._, p. 91), which is sufficiently obvious, but may be compared

with the sign for _strong_, made by some tribes as follows: Hold the

clinched fist in front of the right side, a little higher than the

elbow, then throw it forcibly about six inches toward the ground.

 

[Illustration: Fig. 143.]

 

A typical gesture for _night_ is as follows: Place the flat hands,

horizontally, about two feet apart, move them quickly in an upward

curve toward one another until the right lies across the left.

"Darkness covers all." See Fig. 312, page 489.

 

The conception of covering executed by delineating the object covered

beneath the middle point of an arch or curve, appears also clearly in

the Egyptian characters for _night_, Fig. 144 (Champollion, _Dict._,

p. 3).

 

[Illustration: Fig. 144.]

 

The upper part of the character is taken separately to form that for

sky (see page 372, _infra_).

 

[Illustration: Fig. 145.]

 

The Egyptian figurative and linear characters, Figs. 145 and 146

(Champollion, _Dict._, p. 28), for _calling upon_ and _invocation_,

also used as an interjection, scarcely require the quotation of an

Indian sign, being common all over the world.

 

[Illustration: Fig. 146.]

 

The gesture sign made by several tribes for _many_ is as follows: Both

hands, with spread and slightly curved fingers, are held pendent about

two feet apart before the thighs; then bring them toward one another,

horizontally, drawing them upward as they come together. (_Absaroka_

I; _Shoshoni and Banak_ I; _Kaiowa_ I; _Comanche_ III; _Apache_ II;

_Wichita_ II.) "An accumulation of objects." This may be the same

motion indicated by the Egyptian character, Fig. 147, meaning to

_gather together_ (Champollion, _Dict._, p. 459).

 

[Illustration: Fig. 147.]

 

[Illustration: Fig. 148.]

 

[Illustration: Fig. 149.]

 

The Egyptian character, Fig. 148, which in its linear form is

represented in Fig. 149, and meaning to _go_, to _come, locomotion_,

is presented to show readers unfamiliar with hieroglyphics how a

corporeal action may be included in a linear character without

being obvious or at least certain, unless it should be made clear

by comparison with the full figurative form or by other means. This

linear form might be noticed many times without certainty or perhaps

suspicion that it represented the human legs and feet in the act of

walking. The same difficulty, of course, as also the same prospect of

success by careful research, attends the tracing of other corporeal

motions which more properly come under the head of gesture signs.

 

 

 

_SIGN LANGUAGE WITH REFERENCE TO GRAMMAR._

 

Apart from the more material and substantive relations between signs

and language, it is to be expected that analogies can by proper

research be ascertained between their several developments in the

manner of their use, that is, in their grammatic mechanism, and in the

genesis of the sentence. The science of language, ever henceforward to

be studied historically, must take account of the similar early mental

processes in which the phrase or sentence originated, both in sign and

oral utterance. In this respect, as in many others, the North American

Indians may be considered to be living representatives of prehistoric

man.

 

 

SYNTAX.

 

The reader will understand without explanation that there is in the

gesture speech no organized sentence such as is integrated in the

languages of civilization, and that he must not look for articles or

particles or passive voice or case or grammatic gender, or even what

appears in those languages as a substantive or a verb, as a subject

or a predicate, or as qualifiers or inflexions. The sign radicals,

without being specifically any of our parts of speech, may be all

of them in turn. There is, however, a grouping and sequence of the

ideographic pictures, an arrangement of signs in connected succession,

which may be classed under the scholastic head of syntax. This

subject, with special reference to the order of deaf-mute signs as

compared with oral speech, has been the theme of much discussion, some

notes of which, condensed from the speculations of M. Rémi Valade and

others, follow in the next paragraph without further comment than may

invite attention to the profound remark of LEIBNITZ.

 

In mimic construction there are to be considered both the order in

which the signs succeed one another and the relative positions in

which they are made, the latter remaining longer in the memory than

the former, and spoken language may sometimes in its early infancy

have reproduced the ideas of a sign picture without commencing from

the same point. So the order, as in Greek and Latin, is very variable.

In nations among whom the alphabet was introduced without the

intermediary to any impressive degree of picture-writing, the order

being (1) language of signs, almost superseded by (2) spoken language,

and (3) alphabetic writing, men would write in the order in which they

had been accustomed to speak. But if at a time when spoken language

was still rudimentary, intercourse being mainly carried on by signs,

figurative writing had been invented, the order of the figures would

be the order of the signs, and the same order would pass into the

spoken language. Hence LEIBNITZ says truly that "the writing of the

Chinese might seem to have been invented by a deaf person." The

oral language has not known the phases which have given to the

Indo-European tongues their formation and grammatical parts. In the

latter, signs were conquered by speech, while in the former, speech received the yoke.